TU Dublin - Tallaght Campus in association with the Red Line Book Festival and South Dublin County Council are pleased to announce the opening of the TU Dublin Short Story Competition. Entry is free.

The competition is run by TU Dublin - Tallaght Campus in conjunction with South Dublin Libraries and in association with the Red Line Book Festival.

This year's judge is June Caldwell. Her acclaimed short story collection Room Little Darker was published in 2017 by New Island and in 2018 by Head of Zeus. Her debut novel Little Town Moone is forthcoming with John Murray.

Entries should be submitted via the official online form only, between 14:00 (GMT) on July 5th 2019 until 12.00 GMT (Irish Time), on August 19th 2019.

Entries must be in short story format (a short work of fiction) between 1,500 and 2,000 words long, and should be completely the entrant's own work written in English (high standard), original, unpublished. There is no restriction on theme or style, however the planned 2019 anthology will be called Infinite Possibilities and we are looking for strong stories that (even loosely) reflect this title.

It is the intention of the organisers that the winning and shortlisted entries may be published in an anthology, or other format. Non-prize winning published entries will receive no remuneration. Previous years' anthologies are available on Amazon.

You must read the Rules, and Terms and Conditions and agree to these before you can submit your entry.

Queries before submission should only relate to the contest rules or if there are difficulties in submission. Queries should be sent via e-mail to ritt@ittdublin.ie.

International entries are welcome.

Further information and the SUBMISSION FORM are available online here.

Due to essential system maintenance, some of our services (checkouts, self-service, holds, inter-library loan requests, online account details) may be unavailable for most of the day on the 19th of June. Please plan around this.

If you have any difficulties, please contact the library on 01 4042203 or library@it-tallaght.ie.

Summer Reads

Sit back, relax
and read a good book.

This month we will travel the world from your deck
chair! You don’t need to leave your own
garden to read these stories based in different parts of the world. From a library in Barcelona to a university
in Australia, there is mystery, romance, drama, madness and mirth to be found
in the pages of this selection.

Pop in to the library and borrow one of the selection below from
our book display or browse our fiction collection on the mezzanine level. Then
let’s hope the sun comes out so we can enjoy our reading al fresco.

Barcelona,
Spain

The
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Fiction

Barcelona, 1945: A city
slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an
antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace
in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax.
But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking
discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every
book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in
existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of
Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed
love.

South
Carolina, USA

The
Secret Life of Bees

Fiction

Set in South Carolina in
1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens,
whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother,
was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother,"
Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to
spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that
holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black
beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and
honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female
power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to
come.

Spain

If
You were Me Sheila O’Flanagan

Fiction

On a sultry summer
evening in Seville, anything can happen...

Carlotta O'Keefe is happily engaged, and the
wedding plans are coming together. She's clear about her future path, both
personally and in her busy career. Maybe Chris doesn't make her heart race
every time she sees him, but you can't have that feeling for ever. Can you?

Then, on a trip to Seville, Carlotta runs into
Luke Evans. Luke broke her heart so long ago she'd almost convinced herself
she'd forgotten him. Now, he's not that boy any more, but an attractive and
intriguing man. And he can explain everything that happened way back when.

Suddenly Carlotta's not so sure of anything
any more. Except that what she decides now will shape the rest of her life...

Japan

The
Temple of The Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

Fiction

In The Temple of
the Golden Pavilion, celebrated Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima creates a
haunting and vivid portrait of a young man’s obsession with idealized beauty
and his destructive quest to possess it fully.

Mizoguchi, an ostracized stutterer, develops a
childhood fascination with Kyoto’s famous Golden Temple. While an acolyte at
the temple, he fixates on the structure’s aesthetic perfection and it becomes
his one and only object of desire. However, as Mizoguchi begins to perceive
flaws in the temple, he determines that the only true path to beauty lies in
an act of horrendous violence. Based on a real incident that occurred in
1950, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion brilliantly portrays
the passions and agonies of a young man in post-war Japan, bringing to the
subject the erotic imagination and instinct for the dramatic moment that
marked Mishima as one of the towering makers of modern fiction. With an
introduction by Donald Keene; Translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris.

Berlin

A Woman In Berlin

940.53161

BEE

For eight weeks in 1945,
as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life
in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author
depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their
cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of
the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the
shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always
subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

New York, USA

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Fiction

Set in a time of
sweeping political and social change - from the backlash against the Vietnam
War and the lingering spectre of the oil crisis to the beginnings of the Internet
- 'Let the Great World Spin' is the story of eight disparate lives which will
ultimately collide in the shadow of one reckless and beautiful act.

Ireland

Love and Summer by William Trevor

Fiction

It is summer and a
stranger has come to quiet Rathmoye. He is noticed by Ellie, the young
convent girl, who is married to Dillahan, a farmer still mourning his first
wife. Over the long and warm days, Ellie and the stranger form an illicit
attachment. And those in the town can only watch, holding their tongues, as
passion, love and fate take their inevitable course.

'A portrait of a brackish rural backwater,
complete with family tragedy, sexual scandal, a repressed spinster and a
half-crazed ancient retainer . . . delicate, elegiac, written with all Trevor's
trademark compassion and understanding' Daily Mail

'A series of wrenching human dramas, which
Trevor depicts with kindness and beautiful delicacy' Sunday Telegraph

'Brilliant. Trevor is the ultimate Old
Master' Evening Standard

'Beautiful. A flawless work of art' Independent
on Sunday

USA

The Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Jacki Leyden

Fiction

‘“I am the Queen of Sheba”, my mother
announced to me in a regal voice. She
was wrapped in a toga of bed sheets, with eye pencil hieroglyphics drawn on
her bare arms, a tiara on her head. I
was twelve years old. Sheba was a
vision, and she vanished that same afternoon in the twilight. I have been watching verily for her ever
since… You could say that my life as
her daughter, the life of my imagination, began with my mother’s visions’
Jacki Lyden

‘Belongs on the shelf of classic memoirs, alongside Angela’s Ashes’ –
New York Times

England

Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

Fiction

It is Christmas
afternoon and Peter Martin gets an unexpected phone call from his parents,
asking him to come round. It pulls him away from his wife and children and
into a bewildering mystery.

He arrives at his parents’ house and discovers
that they have a visitor. His sister Tara. Not so unusual you might think,
this is Christmas after all, a time when families get together. But twenty
years ago, Tara took a walk into the woods and never came back and as the
years have gone by with no word from her the family have, unspoken, assumed
that she was dead. Now she's back, tired, dirty, dishevelled, but happy and
full of stories about twenty years spent traveling the world, an epic odyssey
taken on a whim.

However, her stories don't quite hang together
and once she has cleaned herself up and got some sleep it becomes apparent
that the intervening years have been very kind to Tara. She really does look
no different from the young woman who walked out the door twenty years ago.
Peter's parents are just delighted to have their little girl back, but Peter
and his best friend Richie, Tara's one time boyfriend, are not so sure. Tara
seems happy enough but there is something about her. A haunted, otherworldly
quality. Some would say it's as if she's off with the fairies. And as the
months go by Peter begins to suspect that the woods around their homes are
not finished with Tara and his family...

Australia

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Fiction

Meet Don Tillman. Don is
getting married. He just doesn't know who to yet. But he has designed a very
detailed questionnaire to help him find the perfect woman. One thing he
already knows, though, is that it's not Rosie. Absolutely, completely,
definitely not.

Chile

My Invented country
A Memoir by Isabel Allende

920

ALL

The life story of Isabel
Allende - one of the world's favourite writers. It is based on her memories
of her family and the political upheaval in her native country, which
provides both a political and geographical framework of Chile

Guernsey

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Fiction

Written
with warmth and humour, as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration
of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most
surprising ways.

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is
some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their
perfect readers.”

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the
Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book
subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man
she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her
name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters,
Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a
wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie
Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered
breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming,
funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists,
literature lovers all.

Ireland

Amongst Women by John Mc Gahern

Fiction

Moran is an old
Republican whose life was forever transformed by his days of glory as a guerrilla
leader in the War of Independence. Now, in old age, living out in the
country, Moran is still fighting - with his family, his friends, even himself
- in a poignant struggle to come to terms with the past.

Scotland

The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin

Fiction

The assorted leaders of
the G8 countries have gathered in the capital and with daily marches,
demonstrations and scuffles on the streets, the police are stretched to the limit.
But one detective is still deemed surplus to requirements. DI John Rebus has
been sidelined for fear of embarrassing his superiors at this most crucial
time. However, all that changes when the night-tie plunge of a young
politician from the walls of Edinburgh Castle drags Rebus back onto centre
stage. Suicide must be proved, and quickly, to avoid distraction from the
main event.

But that case is swiftly superseded by another
- more deadly - threat. A series of mysterious clues left in the woods near
an ancient 'clootie well' outside Edinburgh start to point to a serial killer
on the loose - a murderer who specialises in taking out newly-released
rapists. The most alarming aspect for Rebus's bosses, though, is that the
well is a stone's throw from Gleneagles itself.

The authorities are keen to hush up both
issues, for fear of overshadowing a meeting of global importance. But Rebus
has never been one to stick to the rules, and when his colleague Siobhan
Clarke finds herself hunting down the identity of the riot cop who assaulted
her mother, it looks as though Rebus and Clarke may be pitted on both sides
of the conflict - and before the end of this monumental week, they each have
to make decisions that will affect them forever...

Norway

The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo

Fiction

Christmas shoppers stop
to hear a Salvation Army concert on a crowded Oslo street. A gunshot cuts
through the music and the bitter cold: one of the singers falls dead, shot in
the head at point-blank range. Harry Hole—the Oslo Police Department’s best
investigator and worst civil servant—has little to work with: no suspect, no
weapon, and no motive. But Harry’s troubles will multiply. As the search
closes in, the killer becomes increasingly desperate, and Harry’s chase takes
him to the most forbidden corners of the former Yugoslavia.

Yet it’s when he returns to Oslo that he
encounters true darkness: among the homeless junkies and Salvationists,
eagerly awaiting a saviour to deliver them from misery—whether he brings new
life or immediate death.

With its shrewdly vertiginous narrative,
acid-etched characters, and white-hot pace, The Redeemer is
resounding proof of Jo Nesbø’s standing as one of the best crime writers of
our time.

Paris, France

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Fiction

'Open your eyes and
see what you can with them before they close forever.'

For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six,
the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by
her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the
invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History.
The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the
Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a
German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his
life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth,

In this magnificent, deeply moving novel, the
stories of Marie-Laure and Werner illuminate the ways, against all odds,
people try to be good to one another.

Greece

The Potter’s House

Fiction

Olivia Giordiadis has
left her English roots behind. She lives on a tiny Greek island, married to a
local man, mother to two small sons. Year on year, island life has followed a
peaceful unchanging rhythm, until now. An earthquake ravages the coast, its
force devastating the island and in the aftermath comes a stranger - an
English woman, destitute but for the clothes she wears. Olivia welcomes the
stranger into her home but begins to sense that her mysterious visitor could
threaten all she holds dear.

India

Q & A by Vikas Swarup

Fiction

Why
is a penniless waiter from Mumbai sitting in a prison cell?

Is it because: a)he has punched a customer; b)he has drunk
too much whisky; c)he has taken money from the till; or d)he is the biggest
quiz-show winner in history? Ram Mohammad Thomas has been arrested. For
answering twelve questions correctly on Who Will Win A Billion? Because a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper
or gone to school cannot know the name of the President of America, or the
location of the Pyramids, or the plays of Shakespeare. Unless he has cheated.

Rescued from the police cell by a lawyer, Ram reviews
television footage of his flawless performance and takes us on an amazing
tour of his life – from the day he is salvaged from a dustbin, to his
employment with a faded Bollywood star, to meeting a security-crazed
Australian colonel, by way of a career as an over-creative tour guide at the
Taj Mahal, to falling in love with Nita, a young prostitute. Passed from
pillar to post for eighteen years, Ram’s instinct for strategy and survival
is infallible.

New York

Run For Your Life by James Patterson

Fiction

A
man who calls himself 'the Teacher' is devising a meticulous plan.
Cold-hearted and cunning, it is time for everyone to learn his name as he
teaches New York a lesson it will never forget.

Intent on exacting revenge and causing mass hysteria, he
embarks on the worst killing spree the city has ever seen. The whole New York
Police Department is tested to its limits; none more so than Detective
Michael Bennett as the Teacher leads him on a terrifying chase that brings
danger perilously close to home.

Items borrowed from the library's general collection will automatically renew each week from the date they are checked-out until the maximum number of renewals is reached, or unless requested by another library user.

The maximum number of renewals is 22 times for undergraduates.

To view a summary of items you have on loan, and how many renewals remain, check your library account HERE

TU Dublin - Tallaght Campus Library is delighted to continue the FREE Leaving Certificate Study Programme for 2019, aimed at providing current Leaving Certificate Students with a quiet, comfortable, academic environment in which to study, as they prepare for the state examinations in June.

The Leaving Certificate Student Study Programme at TU Dublin - Tallaght Campus will run from Monday 20th May until Tuesday 25th June 2019. This access scheme offers the resources of the University Library to pre-examination students for consultation and study, and is open to any Leaving Certificate student.

Registration for this service is now open. There is no cost. Pre-registration is advised and this can be arranged by students completing an application form [including school stamp] and returning it to the library.